Period Pal

Inspiration

Periods. We always dread that time of the month. Our team was inspired by the menstrual cycle and how it affects the body. We wanted to find a way to spread information about how the body changes through the different stages of the menstrual cycle. Our team thought the best way to get users engaged was to create a Tamagotchi-style game taking care of a mini character of themselves during their period. As well as provide resources to learn more about the body during different stages of their cycle.

What it does

Period Pal allows users to take care of a miniature version of themselves during their period. This includes being able to add items to your character, such as water, sleep, chocolate, tea, and exercise, to keep your character's health bars full. There are also icons corresponding to the items used on your character linked on the side to more information as to why your body needs these items.

How we built it

Our team used Unity and C# to build our game. The assets were designed mainly using Adobe Illustrator and slight use of Canva. The Period Pal web player is embedded into our website which was built using HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge was learning how to use Unity and C# to code and build our game. Our team had no experience with game development before this hackathon so it was a lot of fun for us to learn these new skills.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team is proud of completing our project on time. But more importantly all the hard work and effort we put in as a team to bring our idea to fruition.

What we learned

We learned that collaboration and communication are key to successful team work. Our team believes that without those two things we would not have been able to successfully create our project.

What's next for Period Pal

Amongst the many features brainstormed for Period Pal, the most notable is the integration of personal health data taken from personal smart watches, such as the Mi Band, Fitbit, Apple Watch, etc. Our team hopes to be able to take that health data and sync it with the health bars of the user’s character in order to send notification to the user to alert them when they need certain items or activities to increase their health in the game. It is a fun and interactive way to encourage self-care, by making sure you are caring for your mini character. We would also like to include for the time-being ways to customize your character to mirror your image in reality. We believe it is important to provide these options to include people of all different backgrounds.